Aaaargh

Economics, Farming, Food & Drink

So much for my BBQ:

America’s ranchers are facing their smallest cattle herd in 75 years, a shortage now rippling from pastures to some of the nation’s largest meatpackers.

USDA data shows the U.S. entered 2026 with about 86.2 million cattle and calves, the smallest herd since the early 1950s. That’s down from roughly 94.7 million cattle and calves in 2019, a decline of more than 8 million animals.

And therefore:

Tyson Foods announced last week that it will close beef facilities in Illinois and Utah and pursue the sale of another in Washington as it reshapes its beef business amid what the company called one of the most historic cattle shortages the country has ever experienced. Tyson said recent USDA data suggest supply constraints are likely to persist.

And the reason:

“The biggest thing has been drought,” Eric Belasco, head of the agricultural economics department at Montana State University, previously told Fox News Digital.

He said years of dry weather have depleted grasslands across the West and Plains, leaving ranchers without enough feed or water to sustain their herds. Many have been forced to sell cattle early, including cows needed to produce the next generation of calves, making the road to recovery even longer.

The effects are reaching beyond ranches and into grocery stores, where consumers are paying more for beef.

Tell me about it.  Beef has long been a staple chez Du Toit, but I think our current consumption of steak, burgers and such has been more than halved over the past year or two.  As for going out for a steak dinner?  Not since B.C. (before Covid).

I can’t even afford to make my own biltong anymore.  No wonder New Wife has been cranky recently.

Worse is that I don’t much care for chicken, unless in toasties… but I guess that will have to change.

As much as I’m reluctant to let Gummint be involved in anything, I do think that cattle farmers could do with some help from that quarter.  (I don’t know where because I’m not a cattle farmer.  But no, it can’t come from tax relief because that just benefits Big Beef Inc., who controls most of our beef production.)

I have to tell y’all, though:  I’m getting kinda cranky myself every time I go into the store and see those beef prices.  Beef shouldn’t be a luxury foodstuff;  but it’s become one, and I don’t like it.

Thank you, Mother Nature, you dried-out old bitch.

21 comments

  1. The plan to force the entire population on a vegan diet is progressing beyond the wildest dreams of the instigators.

  2. Gee. You don’t think it could be deliberate? I know, I know — weather not under leftist control — yet. (Fuck Bill Gates.) But surely there are other factors. Eat ya damn bugs.

  3. The big four meat processors (Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef) have been squeezing domestic production while simultaneously importing more and more foreign beef. It’s not the drought, it’s the control of the market by the meat packers that are forcing domestic production into the gutter. Fuck them guys. Oh yeah, the big drop in domestic kinda sorta coincided with Covid and Biden. Do you believe in coincidence? Or deliberate action?

  4. I grew up in the Bidnezz, brother still runs the family cattle ranch.

    My own observations:

    1. Drouth is just the straw breaking the Camels back. The industry has been strained for years, dry conditions & range fires just pushed things over the edge. The edge was already painfully close.

    2. .gov. This is the big reason. Regulatory agencies are populated by greenies and activists, who either hate cattle grazing or meat consumption altogether. Billy Gates and his bug burgers, have no real legal authority, what they can do is manipulate .gov regulatory practices. If you rely on .gov controlled grazing land (as most of the West does…we were never sovereign states like Nebraska). Additionally producer prices are heavily manipulated by .gov departments to maintain things like a Futures market.

    3. Slaughterhouses. As stated above these are the chokepoint getting any kind of meat from field to face. They are monopolized by 4 companies, 2 of which are Brazilian owned. So for the last 15 years you may have paid $15 an lb for beef, $2 of that went to the producer. Operations couldn’t make it on those margins so they got out of the game.

    4. Fuel. EVERY element of your food, from field to face, is carried on the back of Diesel fuel. Everything. Whether Corn, Beans, Pork, whatever. When Diesel hits $5 a gallon, and margins can’t sustain it, people get out of the game.

    5. Aging out. Most family operations are dead. Progeny doesn’t want to do the work anymore, or Inheritance taxes force a family to sell out to pay the taxes. Often a ranching operation will support one family, but not Mom/Dad Brother/sister-in-law/grandkids other brother/sister-in-law, etc. So unless the family is adult enough to not fight about pounds-of-flesh (amazingly rare), then the ranch gets sold off to pay the taxes and heirs.

    You can forget about buying in. Land prices in my state have quintupled over the last 15 years (Kalifornication), you won’t buy an 80 acre pasture and raise enough cattle to make a living off of, and pay the bank too. So if you don’t already have a going concern, you aren’t going to build one from the ground up.

    1. Above screed notwithstanding. If you can, you are better off buying 1/2 a beef from a local producer and eating it throughout the year. It is surprisingly affordable compared to Grocery Store prices. But you need a freezer and a place to store it, and its a higher one-time cost.

      1. RHT. As a funny aside. I worked at a feedlot operation for a major Ag Corporation. There was a guy there who’s title was “Chief Cattle Buyer.” Guy was easily 450lbs, could barely walk a flight of steps, and could barely reach his keyboard and mouse because of his gut. Oh and he only came in about 2 days a week most weeks, if that.

        But the guy fecking understood the Futures market, he just had a sixth sense about it, and he’d come in, watch the auctions, buy/sell etc. and sit there and play things. The funny part to me was about 60% of the livestock he bought, never made it to the feedlot, he just knew how to time things so before the feedlot took delivery he’d have a lot of cattle, resold at $0.30 higher a couple of days or even hours later, without doing anything but moving a mouse around. It was one of the damndest things I ever saw. I should have had him teach me how to do that, but I was dumb and he was one of those intuitive types who probably could never explain it anyway.

        It was a hell of a thing to watch. I was in IT so I had to make sure his computer was working when he did come in. Otherwise I would have no idea in hell what he even did.

    4. “4. Fuel. EVERY element of your food, from field to face, is carried on the back of Diesel fuel. Everything. Whether Corn, Beans, Pork, whatever. When Diesel hits $5 a gallon, and margins can’t sustain it, people get out of the game.”
      That’s a big BINGO!
      Energy underlies EVERYTHING, not just food. The ecoweenies (damn them to hell in a handbasket) want to run everything off unreliable solar farms (which are consuming arable land everywhere near populated areas) and windmills, which probably have a lousy ROI, nevermind ecological effects, and they also want do away with chemical fertilizers, massively decreasing crop yield per acre. My gggrandfather rejoiced at harvesting 25 bushels of wheat per acre in a banner year in 1885, and yields today are 50+ bushels/acre. The ecomorons way would take us back to an 1850 economy, which could not sustain the world population as it is now.
      We’d have famine, riots, chaos, wars and mass death.
      The fucking idiot ecozealots have never run the numbers from beginning to the end limit, except the Davos crowd who think their wealth and power would allow them to survive and thrive in a reduced population world.
      They don’t have a clue what their pipe dreams’ end condition would be.

      1. The ecoweenies control the Regulatory environment. Maybe not titularly but at a bureaucratic level they absolutely do.

        I think they do understand. I think they want it to happen because they don’t think they will be the victims, they think they will be the perpetrators. “Millions will starve but that’s I price I’m willing everyone else to pay”. Its the same type of thinking people like….well myself had in the 80’s that thought we’d emerge from our bunkers after a nuclear exchange, to build a new world, as I got older I realized FFS what was I thinking.

        1. “I think they want it to happen because they don’t think they will be the victims, they think they will be the perpetrators.”

          Given that most of the ecoweenies are government school indoctrinated, they wouldn’t know that their kind of Leftist revolutionaries executed their former friends allies regardless of their victims’ previous loyalty and sacrifices. A few that come immediately to mind:
          Jacobins and the Reign of Terror – tens of thousands who helped them overthrow the French monarchy, and then the mob in turn murdered them.
          Stalin’s 1930’s purges – up to ~1,000,000 executed or sent to gulags to disappear forever.
          Hitler’s 1930’s Night of the Long Knives – up to ~1,000 shot to death in one night.
          When the rule of one man or a small cabal replaces the rule of law, no one is safe, not even the ruler.

          1. You can add a thousand other examples. It doesn’t change an idealogue. An idealogue thinks they’ll be breaking someone else’s eggs, not their own.

  5. My brother runs a bit of livestock on the side selling chickens, eggs, and lamb. All the sheep are quickly spoken for nowadays as they are able to come quickly to market and are less of a commitment than buying a 1/2 beef.

    -8notch

    1. If you can stand lamb. I don’t mind it. A lot of folks I know don’t.

      Your best bang for your buck is getting a Hog.

      1. Concur again on the hogs. Hands down the best use of your table scraps and food prep trimmings.

        I actually like lamb. We didn’t have it often, but when we did, I was sent down to the creek to pick mint to make the sauce.

  6. A gentle suggestion is to try ground turkey. It is *not* beef but with proper seasonings it works well in casseroles, meatballs, or even patties. I’ve also found it can be mixed 50/50 with ground beef to extend the beef without serious loss of flavor. YMMV.

    1. I dunno. Wife did that for a while. Texture of it was offputting as hell. I never did cotton to it.

      I agree with the OP about chicken too. Its the styrofoam of meat. City folks seem to think its God’s own meat tho.

      Chicken and Turkey are a lot like masturbation. It takes the edge off, but ain’t nothing like the real thing.

  7. For burgers try mixing in pork mince (50:50). But really, why are you buying beef that’s been stuffed full of chemicals in the first place? Try some Scottish beef: we’re serious about our beef. I understand that the Argentines are the same.

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